


Our Tomorrows After

by WordsFromAsh



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: During the War, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Post-ACOMAF, Wedding Planning, Wedding Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 23:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10729467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordsFromAsh/pseuds/WordsFromAsh
Summary: After Feyre almost loses Rhys on the battlefield, she decides that maybe they shouldn't wait for a wedding. Rhys does not agree.





	Our Tomorrows After

Rhys held himself well as we made our way through the camp. He kept an easy smile and managed to hold his shoulders back as he nodded to those we passed. The bond was taut under the strain of his mask of painless normalcy, but I said nothing.

If he wanted to pretend for everyone else, fine. But I knew him well and knew he was not as fine as he claimed when someone dared to ask. _I_ was hardly fine and that was only from being an observer to his recovery these past days.

When we finally entered our tent, I did up the snaps on the flaps. They weren’t much in the grand scheme of locks and doors, but they did their job at giving us a sliver of privacy when there was not much to afford. When I turned around, Rhys was already sitting on the edge of our cot. His eyes were closed and his jaw was clenched. His shoulders slumped, losing the battle against the pain that no doubt ached there.

Even with this sight, I couldn’t help but let out a breath. He was finally back. Days of being kept with the healers and I finally had him back here with me. I would wake up at night with him next to me instead of panic to keep me company.

I made my way over to him and sat on his right side, the good side. My weight dipped the bed so he ended up leaning towards my direction, our arms brushing against each other. “Can I see it?” I whispered and stared straight ahead much like he was.

The healers had politely requested for me to leave every time they dressed and cleaned his wounds. Besides the initial sight of the dagger sticking out from him, I only got to judge the gravity of the wound through the intensity of the red bloom that seeped through the layers of bandages.

I needed to know how he was doing and the injury could not wear a mask like Rhys could.

His answer was in the way he tried to shirk off the loose tunic I had brought him earlier. The movement pulled at the muscles around his wound and caused him to wince.

“Rhys,” I started. I wanted to see, but not if it would hurt him further.

He shook his head. “It’s fine, I just—“ He tried to maneuver a different way out of his tunic with the same result.

I got up to kneel in front of him. I pushed his hands away with a quick, “Then let me.” I eased him out of his tunic and revealed the bandages that wrapped around his chest and over his left shoulder. There were no rust-red marks in the bandages this time, thank the Mother.

My fingers ghosted over the edge where bandages met skin. I looked up to him, wanting to meet his eyes in a silent question, but he would not look to me. He only nodded for me to continue.

So, I undid the wrap, slowly unraveling it so not to disturb Rhys too much. With each layer I unwound, I was glad to still see relatively clean cloth, just a touch of pink speckled the final layer. And then I was left with nothing but his bare skin and a clear view of his injury that mangled a part of the tattoos I often traced at night while trying to fall asleep. Pink and puckered, it still looked inflamed, but thankfully not infected.

My mouth felt dry looking at it still. I had witnessed many fae recover from ash injuries within days, but Rhys….

The healer had told us that with the location of the injury, the heart had spread the effects quickly to other parts of his body for a slow recovery.

A part of me wanted to blame it on myself for not giving him enough of my blood. For not being by his side to prevent the hit in the first place. Not only had Rhys and our friends told me otherwise, but so had the healer as I sat by Rhys’s bedside while he was unconscious and bleeding. Oh Cauldron, there had been so much blood that first day. It had been so easy to believe that he had—that he had—

My fingers trembled above the raw skin, but did not touch. No matter how much I wanted the reassurance of his heartbeat beneath my palm.

“I’m fine, Feyre,” Rhys murmured. He touched the inside of my wrist. “It’s just sore right now.”

My gaze flicked up to his.

“Do you still have the ring?” The words slipped past me before they even formed into full thoughts.

There was absolute confusion at my odd question. I waited for his answer, knowing deep down what it already would be. “Of course,” he finally said. “I keep it in my pocket so to speak. Why do you ask?”

“I want to wear it.” I swallowed. “I want to get married.”

His brows furrowed as he cocked his head to the side. “We’ve established that, darling. The ring is--“

I didn’t let him finish before I shook my head. “No. Now. I want to get married now.” The following silence felt heavy. Heavy enough to start the high-pitched ringing in my ears and make me want to almost let the subject drop. But I had had long hours to think about this while I sat at his bedside and held his cool, limp hand as he remained unconscious. “I know there’s no priestess, but Amren is ancient and powerful and surely that would suffice. And I don’t care what we wear as long as we’re both there and—“

Rhys tensed and pushed me back so that he held me an arm’s length away. Only his right hand settled on my shoulder, his left stayed still and favored. “Feyre,” he said tentatively. His eyes were searching mine for some silent answer. “What makes you bring this up now?”

My cheeks were growing hot under his scrutiny but I held his gaze. If I didn’t, I would only end up looking at the raw injury on his shoulder. It would scar whenever it healed. “It doesn’t matter. I just—I want to be able to call you my husband as well as mate.”

“You can and you will. And you know I want the same, but you made it clear to me that you wanted to wait until after the war to do it all, remember?” He reached up and brushed my cheek to push away nonexistent stray hair. “So why change your mind? Why now?”

“Just yes or no, Rhys.”

There was no hesitation before he said, “No.”

My eyes closed at the word.

“Feyre, you know I want to marry you. I’d give you the entire gods damned world If I could, but not this. Not right now. I want us married under the right reasons. Because we simply want to, not because- because whatever this is about.”  He sighed, the same heavy one he used earlier today upon hearing that one of our attacks from the west on Spring failed and then immediately after heard the list of casualties from our own battle he suffered from.

I could feel my eyes glaze over as I fought not to cry. I was overreacting. I knew I was, but I also knew I couldn’t help it as my emotions rose like flood waters up into my throat.

“Please, Feyre. I’m just trying to understand. A thought for a thought, at least?”

I stared at the floor, at the space between us, trying to piece together the words I wanted to say. I turned a jar of salve over in my hand. “I thought you were dead.” I said bluntly and swallowed immediately after as if that could retract the words.

I almost lost him. I didn’t see him after the last clash of steel reverberated across the battlefield. I didn’t see him among the standing once we regrouped. For a split-second I hadn’t felt the- the—

My fingers curled and my eyes stung.

Rhys gathered me into his arms as best he could. His good arm tugged me closer around my waist and the other tried to wrap around my shoulders. My arms wound around his waist, my face pressed against the uninjured side of his chest as the tears finally welled up.

“You won’t lose me,” Rhys said, his own voice sounded rough with emotion.

I shook my head against him, smearing tears in the process. “You can’t promise that,” my voice trembled on the edge of breaking. “You don’t know. I could’ve— _you_ could’ve—If that dagger had been any lower, Rhys.”

Rhys only held me tighter.

It had been so close to his heart. So close that my own heart had been in pain at the sight when I finally did find him. He had already been unconscious then and his skin had taken a sickly pallor to it. In that moment, I fully believed he had been stolen from me.

“I want to experience everything with you. I want to be with you in every way possible,” I murmured. As friends and as mates. As High Lord and High Lady. As husband and wife. I wanted it all. If we tied enough bonds between us then maybe we couldn’t be broken apart by Death so easily.

I was scared. Scared for him. Scared for me. Scared for our future or more accurately, lack of one.

Slowly, he pulled away from me and I let him. He didn’t go too far, just enough to look at my miserable tear-streaked face. He cupped my face with a hand on either side and tilted my chin up to look at him. He swiped some tears away with his thumbs and I leaned into his touch. “It’s okay to be scared, Feyre, because I am, too. For you. ”

He paused to give a comforting _shh_ and wipe away more tears.

“The key to surviving it, darling, is to recognize these fears exist, but not to dwell on them. Instead, you must remember the end you’re fighting for. It’s not easy—I have been there before—but we are a Court of Dreams for a reason.”

My lips parted, but I had no words at my disposal in the moment and I could only bring my hands up to cover his. I didn’t know whether he was referencing the previous war or his time Under the Mountain, possibly both, but the shadows were in his eyes either way.

“Rhys,” I managed to strangle into a whisper.

He smiled a soft smile and shook his head to dismiss the attention towards him. “Think to the tomorrows. That is how we continue to survive when everything is going to shit.”

I took a deep, steadying breath.

I breathed out.

“It feels like this will never end,” I said quietly still and leaned my forehead against his chest.

“But it will. It will.”

His hand trailed up and down my spine, soothing me.

I nodded against him and took a deep breath. I let it out, slow and steady, as I tried to process everything. It will end. It will end with scars and with no doubt nightmares, but this will all end and when it does…. I leaned back to look up at him again. “Tomorrow,” I said, meeting his gaze.

“Tomorrow,” he echoed with a small smile that matched my own.

I was the one to break the stare to look back at the injury. The one that was so close to his heart, but wasn’t. The one that would scar, but not kill. “Right now, though, I need to dress that again,” I said and we both ignored how off my voice sounded from crying. Or how I raised my arm to wipe my eye with my sleeve.

I applied the cold salve as gently as I could then moved to bandaging. It was while I was making my last pass around him and was in the middle of tying it off the bandages that Rhys interrupted the silence filled only by steady breathing and the muffled sound of the camp outside. “Starfall.”

I finished that and helped him lay back in the bed, gingerly lowering him against the pillows.

“What?”

“I never told you my thought,” Rhys said casually. I forgot he even had lured my worries out with our little game. “And _I_ am thinking that we should be married on Starfall. If that’s okay with you, of course.”

I paused as I was crawling carefully onto the bed myself to situate myself against his right side. He held that all-too-familiar smirk as he waited for me to catch up and be on the same page as him. “What? You think I haven’t thought about our wedding? It’s part of what gets me through all this, knowing you’ll be stuck with me in every possible way after. You’ll be sick of me before we hit our first century,” he laughed.

I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face at the whole idea—of being stuck with him and of Starfall; of this tomorrow he spoke so confidently of. “Starfall sounds perfect. Although, I hope you’re okay with me not wearing white. I’ve decided it’s not my color.”

Rhys laughed and when that petered out, the glorious smile remained. The smile that made him glow in his own way—no Day Court magic necessary. “I don’t care _what_ you wear. You could show up in your leathers for all I care. Show up in nothing at all.” He arched a brow at the suggestion and I swatted at him, which only made him smile wider. “You’ll look divine regardless.”

My cheeks warmed at the compliment and at the way he looked up at me, with the awe of an answered dream. His eyes glistened like real stars in the soft light illuminating him. And my cheeks grew even hotter when I realized where the light was coming from. I buried my face in his chest. “You’re making me glow,” I mumbled and he laughed. I felt the weight of his arm cross over my back and pin me to him.

“I would also accept ‘glowing’ as a form of dress,” he teased.

It was inevitable that I would glow at some point, if not the entire ceremony. And the night to follow. I smiled against him, perfectly aware that my glow that had become rare during these grueling days was still present, and continued our game of distraction. “What do you think about the colors purple and silver?”

“I think that if you wanted to express how enamored you are by my eyes that you don’t need the guise of wedding colors to do so, Feyre, darling. I am always open to hearing your compliments.”

I groaned much to his delight. The bond sparked between us with his amusement and I pinched him. “You’re an insufferable prick. Navy and silver, it is then.”

“Oh, but I _like_ purple.”

He poked my side, instigating an actual knee-jerk reaction from me. I grabbed the offending hand and entwined our fingers to keep him from causing any more trouble. Our clasped hands rested flat against his stomach.

“Too bad. You ruined it.”

He laughed and I closed my eyes to enjoy that sound. To enjoy _this._ This single moment where nothing else existed outside of us. There were no near-deaths, no war, and no scars in this moment. There was just us and our tomorrow.


End file.
